Letters to M / HTR, 2020 Video, b/w, Sound, 1-channel

In 2016 Ornella Fieres acquired from an inheritance sale a box containing about seven hundred letters from the 1960s and 70s from the former GDR. The letters, including postcards and photographs, were addressed to a woman in East Berlin. Among the letters were also a few that she had written herself. For the video installation Letters to M / HTR Fieres let an AI transcribe the handwritten texts in print. In this way, she made the content of the partially hard to decipher handwriting accessible. Fieres selected over a hundred text fragments, mostly single sentences. Due to a random generator, the text fragments on display alternate, so that new textual contexts are constantly created. Sometimes the transcriptions are afflicted with small errors.

The work is presented by medienkunstverein (media art association) as part of the exhibition:

TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES. Visions of the Postdigital

The presented works, blur and transcend the boundaries between human and machine, past and future, material and immaterial. They envision a time when technologies not only serve as tools but also become mediums of freedom, opening up possibilities for shaping our reality.